Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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One thing that always strikes me about agriculture and farming is we have this model within it where, for instance, there is social farming, whereby we bring people who have got mental health issues or are service users with intellectual disabilities out to a farm and out to nature, with animals and all of that, which is really positive for their mental health. Yet, we have this sort of contradiction within that whereby we have a crisis, or the elements of a crisis, for many people within the agricultural community who feel that farming is something that has negatively affected their mental health. I have often concluded, when looking at all of this, that it is really the aspect of trying to run the farm as a business that has the negative impact on farmers' mental health. It is the pressures of not being able to earn the kind of money they need to be able to earn, or the pressures of possibly a neighbour's farm going down with TB and "Am I next?" It is all of that that causes the pressure. The actual farming itself is very positive and very good for people's mental health because they are in nature. There is no clock to clock in and clock out. There are not the same pressures you have in other aspects of earning a living.

We need to recognise that there is a very positive element to it as well. Something I recognise and often is not talked about is the use or misuse of substances by farmers because of the stresses of all of that. Many farmers drink too much. Many farmers go on the bottle in the evening when they are home alone in order to quell the loneliness. Certainly within younger farmers there is a culture of substance misuse. The use of cocaine and all of these substances is rampant throughout the whole of our society and the agriculture sector and people who are involved in farming are not immune to it either. What research or what element have we looked at in the context of all of that and the impact it has on mental health?